Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Solar Chimney Power Plant’s Turbine

Abstract

The solar chimney power plant is a relatively new electricity generation concept, based on renewable energy, combining the greenhouse effect with the chimney suction. The solar chimney powerplant consists of three parts, the solar collector, the chimney and the turbine generator unit, of which the study was focused on the later part. To evaluate the turbine performance inside the solar chimney powerplant, experimental system was constructed in Aswan, Egypt that has a metrological site (23°58'N and 32°47'E) occurs. The system was constructed to evaluate the performance of the solar chimney turbine and power generation characteristic in the hottest site where Aswan is located at the nearest of the Tropic of Cancer at the summer season. Velocity, electric power generation and the turbine efficiency are studying in this work. The numerical analyses were performed by using a commercial code CFX, ANSYS 16.1 to simulate the flow through the turbine and overall system. The study shows that the range of power generated (1.2 W - 4.4 W). It can be estimated, according to the results, the variation trend in pressure drops with the turbine rotation speed increase with small differences when the turbine rotation speed surpasses 1800 rpm with average efficiency of 57%. It is concluded that the theoretical model is basically valid for the system under study, and the CFD simulation can be used conveniently to predict the performance of the system, the comparison between them and experimental result shows a good agreement.